Signed in as:
filler@godaddy.com
Newsletter 'June' 2021
President's Message
Hello June!
Hope you are enjoying our summer weather. We are getting closer to a more normal type lifestyle after more than a year of virtual meetings. We do have a treat for you for our Zoom General Meeting on June 16th @ 10 am. Connie Furtney, President of the Forest Probus Club is giving us a presentation entitled “Almost Welcome: Tales of Africa”. Her bio is offered below.
In August, if our government allows, we will be making plans for a physical Probus Meeting in September. We will be making contact with everyone in our club to find out their interest level. We also hope you will consider assisting on our Management Team. We definitely will need a Treasurer, Vice President, and help with our Social and Program Committees. Please think about it! This is your club and we need your help!
Hang in there! We are getting closer.
May Meeting
We welcomed Kim Robinson, Director, and Sandra Valeriote, Outreach Coordinator, from the OVC (Ontario Veterinary College) Pet Trust to our May Zoom meeting. Pet Trust, founded in 1986 to support research, education and health care at OVC, was the first charitable fund dedicated to animals. To date they have raised $45 million. They make an annual donation of $500,000 to OVC and funds from the Pet Trust have supported the Mona Campbell Centre for Animal Cancer, opened in 2012, surgery and anesthesia facilities at OVC Companion Animal Hospital. Of the 20,000 animal visits to the hospital, 60% are admitted to ICU there. Based on the principle that human medicine can inform animal medicine and vice versa, some of the projects that are being supported by funds from the Pet Trust include: fecal transplant in dogs with inflammatory bowel disease, investigating common heart disease in cats and ways to reduce fear at routine veterinary visits. The general public can volunteer their pets to take part in the clinical trials. Pet Trust has produced a variety of guides dealing with pet loss. Funds come from pet memorial donations, subscriptions to their magazine Best Friends, gift planning and speaking events, such as our Probus meeting. They have a presence on social media and more information, such as arranging a tour of the Companion Animal Hospital, can be found at www.pettrust.ca
We have a lot of openings on our Management Team and it is soon time for many of us to hand over the reins. We need a President, Vice-President and Treasurer and several other Committees need new members. If you were on the Management Team before or just have an interest, you have the expertise we need to form a Nominating Committee.
Please send me an email at judyhollinger777@gmail.com or call me at 519-535-0241. For this great Club to continue, we need to find a way to fill these vacancies.
Probus Management Team Meeting
May 12, 2021
Present: Judy Hollinger, Deb Moss, Janet Snider, Jane Fletcher, Mary Sellars, Norma King, Elizabeth Brekelman, Sandy Smith
Judy polled everyone about their role on the management team for next year.
· Judy will be Past President
· Jane agreed to step into the President’s role with help and support for tech issues
· Deb will continue as Membership chair
· Sandy will continue as Secretary and Newsletter chair
· Mary is stepping down from the Treasurer’s role. She is going to contact Sue Courtney about being her replacement
· Elizabeth will continue on the Program committee
· Janet will continue to work on the directory – she suggested that new members might have to send their own photos to her
· Norma will continue to work on the anniversary luncheon, but is not looking to stay on the Social committee beyond that. She suggested that Joyce McKinney might be willing to come back on the committee and will contact her to find out.
Chris will remain as Web editor.
· Judy will contact Sharon Bale to find out about her status as chair of the Getting to Know You committee
We need a Vice President and members to fill out some of the committees.
Judy attended a workshop on running hybrid meetings and realized that the tech requirements were likely beyond what we might be able to do at South Gate. The alternative would be for Judy to record an in-person meeting then post it on You Tube for non-attending members to view at their convenience. This would be a much easier process than trying to stream the meeting live.
The question of dues for our new season in September came up. Mary reported that we have a bank balance of $10,827.49. If we were able to start using South Gate right away in September, our operating expenses for the next year would be $3,300, plus the cost of speakers. Mary proposed not charging fees for the 2021-2022 year. This led to discussion about possibly charging a nominal fee, rather than the usual $50. The final consensus was that no fee will be charged.
We need to have an accurate count of active members in order to know what our payment to Probus Canada will be next year. We need to make this payment to them in order to continue to have insurance and to remain part of Probus Canada. We will collect this data in mid-August. An email will be sent to all members informing them of the no-fee policy and asking them to confirm membership through a simple reply. We will contact members who do not reply to the email by phone.
Next Management Team meeting: August. By then we will have a better idea of whether or not we can start to have in-person meetings. We will also create the message for the email to members and the script for follow-up phone calls.
Minutes prepared by Sandy Smith, May 13, 2021
April Meeting Zoom
We enjoyed our first “live” speaker since last year – well, live on Zoom. David Chapman, who has been photographing weather phenomena since the age of 16, shared his slide show entitled Wild, Weird and Wacky Weather. Through some great time lapse photography and his very informative commentary we learned about all kinds of weather events: snow spouts, rain spouts, ice bridges and caves, Arctic sea smoke, steam devils, sun dogs, solar halos, sun pillars, light pillars, fog bow, spray bow and rainbow, rain curtains, inferior and superior mirages and of course aurora borealis. He informed us that 2023-26 will be peak years for northern lights and by looking at www.spaceweather.com and finding the forecasts for Ohio, New York and Michigan, we can discover dates and times for viewing this display in Southern Ontario.
Coming up:
General Meeting: Wednesday, June 16 at 10am
CONNIE FURTNEY—BIO
Connie Furtney was a classroom teacher with the Lambton Kent District School Board for 36 years. During her career, she enjoyed many interesting experiences, including teaching at the University of Windsor, planning and presenting courses throughout southwestern Ontario, teaching in Korea, and two summers spent teaching educators in Uganda for the Canadian Teachers’ Federation. Connie lives in Forest with her husband Doug, also a retired educator. They are parents to two grown daughters. These days, you can find Connie playing soprano sax in her group, “Downtown Jazz”.
Laughter is the Best Medicine
